[That's "Our Day Will Come" playing.] Only last night I was thinking that no matter what happens in the future, I've had a very interesting life. I wouldn't always have used that phrase, so perhaps now is the proper time to be assembling this journal. The hardest part is trying to remember the sequence of things....and the frustrating part is that there's nobody I can ask.

Somewhere along the line, Jean left us for a while and went to work as a housekeeper for a family in Wallace (not far from Tatamagouche). I have to assume we needed the money and probably she and Mum were beginning to get on each other's nerves, too. I remember visiting her and that the house she was "housekeeping" was right on the water, with dark drapes pulled shut and a musty aging smell permeating the rooms.

By this time, I was back in Tatamagouche, taking that business course (which I rushed through, taking two years in one). It was very different being back - Coralee was travelling with the theatre group, the Hotel was closed and I was boarding with the Perrins - Mother and Father, teenage son (Ronnie) and Grandmother Perrin. I vividly remember how worried they were that I wouldn't eat the giant breakfasts that were a normal part of their day: bacon and sausage, eggs and fried potatoes, sometimes a smoked kipper, toast and muffins and rolls, and the list goes on and on. Mrs. Perrin was the postmistress and she loved to cook. When she came home at the end of the day, she prepared huge meals and then once the dishes were done, she started baking. I remember coming home from dates to find a note pinned to my door: "There are cookies on the counter". There would not just be "cookies", there would be platters of squares and cakes and scones that looked like the start of a gigantic party or a catering effort.

Old Mrs. Perrin thought I was far too scatty, although I think deep in her heart somewhere she liked me. She was upset that I wouldn't go to church every single Sunday morning with them, but instead I'd sleep in and then go for long walks down to the wharf. I used to rush home from class every day to watch some kind of a live dance party on t.v. She would "tsk, tsk" and click her tongue at the goings on of the young folks. She would say, "Oh My, that's coming from the States, isn't it?" (she never believed me when I told her it was really coming from a studio in Halifax, although I don't know if it was or not). She would leave the room when the Ed Sullivan show was on if it was featuring male ballet dancers - "It's all too much for me. I'm going to bed".

I went home most weekends by train from Tatamagouche to Stellarton. I loved the train ride and I think it's sad that CN rail has dropped most of the routes that used to service the little places. There would hardly ever be any passengers when I'd be leaving on Friday night and I'd go up to the engine cab and sit and talk to the engineers for most of the trip. I remember there were red leather seats and it was very noisy and smelly, because the train was powered by coal. Great plumes of smoke would trail behind us and as we passed the backyard of each little village along the way, the engineer would blow the whistle in a shrill, piercing almost primitive cry.

One of the things Coralee and I used to do was walk the train tracks; the wooden slats between the rails were too far apart for a normal step, so you'd have to kind of lurch from slat to slat. If you put your ear to the rails, you could hear a train coming from far away long before you could see it. We'd put pennies on the rails to be flattened out as the train roared past and wave and yell hello to the men in the engine cabs.

Mum had rented half a duplex not far from the main street. It had electricity, running water, indoor plumbing and a big back yard. It was right next door to the hall where they held the Saturday night dances. It was a running battle for as long as we lived there trying to keep people from cutting into the driveway on Saturday nights to (how shall I put this) relieve themselves! We finally convinced our landlord to put up a fence. I believe it was here that we had our first television set, although I think we could only get two TV stations, one of which was CBC. If you're from "down east" you might remember "Don Messer's Jubilee" which was one of my Grandmother's favorites. There was a nice family, with a daughter Joanne about my age, renting the other side. When Laurie and I came back over 20 years later, the same family was still living there!


Union Street, Stellarton

When the first year of my course was drawing to a close, some "head hunters" from Halifax held a job fair at the school. There were so many jobs to choose from you could take your pick. One of the girls I was chumming around with at the time, Deanna, and I decided we should go to Halifax together, so we arranged a series of interviews. I remember we were very excited; we took the bus and shared a room at the YWCA. By the end of the week, we had both landed jobs. Deanna went to work for a medical supply company and I signed on with the Hospital Insurance Commission (the earliest days of what I guess you'd call "medicare"). We left the "Y" and rented a room together with a family in Armdale, right on the water.

It's true that you have to live with somebody before you get to really know them. Deanna and I had been chums but not close "bosom buddies". When we settled into our new quarters, I wanted to go out and explore. After all, this was a CITY and neither of us had ever been anywhere before. Deanna wanted to stay in and wash her hair. The word "neurotic" keeps coming to mind: she would come home from work and wash her hair. She would get up early early in the morning, and wash her hair....and then do it all over again, day after day. Meantime, I had met a fellow named Terry (who was an accountant or something) and he had lots of male friends. Deanna would never come out with us. There were singles dances every Wednesday night, just a skip and a jump away from the Arm, but I usually went by myself. Eventually, I decided to move closer to the centre of town and I rented a room by myself close to Dalhousie University, with a nice young Scottish couple. The last time I ever saw Deanna was at an intersection on Robie Street. It was about 7 a.m. and she was sitting on the passenger side of a truck wearing her housecoat and a pair of bedroom slippers. The driver was a young, bearded fellow. She pretended she didn't see me and they drove away and that was that. To this day, I can only guess at what was going on...it boggles the mind.

My job at the Hospital Insurance Commission was a hectic, breaking-in period. I could barely type 40 words a minute and taking shorthand broke me out into a cold sweat. I remember sitting in a big office taking letters in shorthand from one of the doctors who smoked a pipe and mumbled. I could only make out about every third word he said but I was too nervous to actually tell him. I had a big clunky manual typewriter and I was supposed to type up four copies of every letter: one original and three onion-skin copies. The first day he used a "Re" line, I had no idea what he was talking about; obviously that wasn't something we'd covered in my typing course. The "Re" line is the subject heading. I was so tense that my muscles all tightened up and I could hardly type; I made hundreds of errors that I had to erase (on all copies) and ended up with smudged, sweaty looking originals I had to retype over and over again.

It all came to a crashing halt when one of the men in the office cornered me against the filing cabinets in the mail room. Today it would be called "harrassment"; then, it was just something I was afraid to tell anybody about. Instead, I applied for another job and within a year had left the Commission far behind for the world of radio and television.

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